Ron Long as a 19 year old in 1982 came up with the idea for a customer-friendly car repair garage that would make available professional-grade tools, lifts and state-of-the-art diagnostic equipment to do-it-yourself mechanics, but it wasn’t until 2015 that he and his wife Cheryl opened Gearhead Systems International in Warwick. “I was in the […]
The real Wilhelm Furtwängler was a polarizing and divisive figure in 20th Century music. Universally acclaimed as one of the greatest orchestra conductors of all time, he chose to remain in Germany during its Nazi years between Adolf Hitler coming to power in 1933 and the end of World War II in 1945. Furtwängler made […]
Simply reading the 77-page decision by the Rhode Island Supreme Court provides a thorough and authoritative tutorial to the exercise in backroom politics that lies behind the approval of the Deepwater Wind “demonstration project” off Block Island. It’s all there: how the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) initially found that the agreement to sell wind power […]
Rhode Island is unusual among the states for a tax policy that treats rolling papers as equivalent to cigarettes, such that a package of 20 sheets of rolling paper is taxed as if it was a pack of 20 ready-made cigarettes, the current excise tax for which is $3.75. Sales tax of 7% is then […]
Before the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus shuts down forever after nearly a century, their second-to-last shows will be at the Dunkin Donuts Center in Providence, May 4-7. Facing persistent severe criticism from animal welfare campaigners, the circus announced in 2015 that it would retire its use of elephants, long the definitive trademark […]
Important: Remember that items made with cannabis may be illegal in your jurisdiction unless you have proper medical certification, and must always be kept strictly away from children and pets. Cannabis has been known since ancient times, and some claim that the mysterious קַנַּבּוֹס (“kaneh-bosim,” singular “kaneh-bos”) listed as an ingredient of the holy anointing […]
Nominated for nine Tony Awards and winning two, Lend Me a Tenor by playwright Ken Ludwig is an unambitious and ridiculous farce that depends upon numerous perfect coincidences and character stereotypes. The central plot element is a case of mistaken identity that depends upon both parties to the confusion wearing blackface makeup to perform the […]
Inherit the Wind is one of the great plays of the past century and Ocean State Theatre Company does it due justice as a masterpiece, originally produced in 1955 at the height of McCarthyism. In his “director’s note” in the program, Fred Sullivan, Jr., compares it to other political plays that reach general principles beyond […]
If you know the music of Tom Lehrer, underground satirist of the 1950s and counter-cultural television star of the 1960s, Tom Foolery is a revue that will trigger waves of nostalgia. The musical and its song selection date from 1980, only a few years removed from Lehrer’s active performance days which, it is worth noting, […]
The latest in a series of biography plays written by Leonard Schwartz, Goodbye and Hurry Back is about the romance between Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall that began in 1944 on the set of her first movie, To Have and Have Not, when she was 19 and he was 44. Although at the Arctic Playhouse, […]